Flint was under the control of a state-appointed emergency manager when it began drawing water from the Flint River as a cost-saving measure last year. Tests show the corrosive nature of the river water caused lead in the pipes that deliver it to homes and other structures to leach into the drinking water, causing it to exceed federal limits for lead — which can cause permanent brain damage in children.

There's now universal agreement that the city's switch to Flint River water was a mistake without necessary safeguards, such as adding anticorrosion materials to the water before it was pumped to homes through the lead pipes to help prevent leaching.

But there's no consensus about whether the bad choice was one that could have been made by elected leaders in any cash-strapped city, or whether the Flint debacle is an indictment of Public Act 436, which Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law in December 2012, just weeks after voters rejected its earlier incarnation, Public Act 4 of 2011.

Snyder and other proponents said the revamped law gave financially distressed cities more options, control and financial support. Critics, including the Stand up for Democracy group that worked to repeal the earlier law, said it was an equally onerous example of state overreach.

Eric Scorsone, an extension specialist in the state and local government program at Michigan State University and an expert in public finance issues, said there's greater risk under an emergency manager that decisions could be taken that sacrifice other important considerations to the bottom line. But he said what happened in Flint does not mean the EM law is a bad statute that must be repealed.

"I think it's more about government leaders in general have to be careful when we're in a cost-cutting mode," whether dealing with water or services such as police and fire protection, he said. "You have to pay the bills, but you also have to ask yourself how far can you go before you start to endanger public health."

Elsewhere in Michigan, the use of emergency managers has been a mixed bag, with Allen Park, Benton Harbor and Flint — with the exception of the water crisis — being among the more successful examples, and Ecorse and Highland Park among the less successful ones, Scorsone said.

Though no problem has been more glaring than the one in Flint, other decisions made by emergency managers have been criticized, such as the decision in Pontiac to sell the Silverdome, the former home of the Detroit Lions, for $583,000 in 2009. The investors who bought it said in 2014 they want to sell it for $30 million.

"In hindsight, it seems way too cheap right now," Wayne Workman, Michigan's deputy treasurer for local government services, said of the 2009 sale. But "the city was bleeding. ... It was time to get some liquidity," and the facility had an annual maintenance cost of $1.5 million. "It was not going to make any money for the city for a long, long time."

Scorsone said the use of EMs has generally been more successful in cities than it has been in school districts, such as Detroit Public Schools, where the nature of school funding and the fact students can easily leave for other school districts make for problems much more difficult for EMs to handle.

"I think what (the Flint situation) points out is the implementation of this ... has to be carefully balanced," Scorsone said. "There could be a tendency to go with cost savings plans that are not always thought out as well as they should be.

"It's easy to Monday morning quarterback," but "this needs to be a lesson for government leaders in general. I don't think it's an indictment of the law, per se."

Flint, which is now under a transition advisory board as an interim step toward return to local control, was placed in receivership under an emergency manager appointed by Snyder in 2011. The city, which had previously purchased Lake Huron water through the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department, began drawing its water from the Flint River in April 2014. The city stuck with the river water despite months of complaints from residents about the poor taste and color of the water, among other concerns. It reconnected to the Detroit system on Oct. 16.

Snyder and other state officials have noted that Flint Mayor Dayne Walling and the Flint City Council backed the 2013 decision to split with DWSD and move to the planned Karegnondi Water Authority, which will also draw water from Lake Huron through a pipeline that is still under construction.

"The unfortunate situation in Flint is in no way an indictment ... of Public Act 436, the Local Financial Stability and Choice Act," said Terry Stanton, a spokesman for the Treasury Department.

"This is not a situation where the mayor and council wanted to utilize one system with the EM reversing course," Stanton said. "All involved in the decision-making process agreed KWA was the best long-term option for the city of Flint."

When Flint notified Detroit in April 2013 that it had opted to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority, Detroit gave it one year's notice that it was terminating its contract to supply Flint with Lake Huron drinking water. Detroit's decision to cut Flint off before the Karegnondi pipeline to Lake Huron would be completed — a decision made one month after Detroit was placed under the control of its own former emergency manager, Kevyn Orr — is what precipitated Flint's move to the Flint River as a drinking water source pending completion of its own water provider.

Walling, who takes ownership of the decision to switch to the Karegnondi Water Authority, told the Flint Journal he had no direct involvement in the decision to draw drinking water from the Flint River.

A March 7, 2014, letter from then-Flint emergency manager Darnell Earley to the DWSD, obtained by the ACLU of Michigan, shows Earley declined the DWSD's offer to continue selling water to Flint after the termination of the contract in April of 2014, saying "the Flint Water Treatment Plant will be fully operational and capable of treating Flint River water prior to the date of termination."

State Senate Minority Leader Jim Ananich, D-Flint, said the decision to draw drinking water from the Flint River, which was conditional on oversight by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, "was during a period of an emergency manager, and there weren’t many decisions that were allowed to be made by local officials."

"Definitely, we need to look at the emergency manager laws and make sure there is some accountability," Ananich said. "They shouldn’t be leaving cities with such crises."

Earley is now the emergency manager of Detroit Public Schools.

Snyder told the Free Press he doesn't necessarily think the Flint water crisis is a knock against the emergency manager law and said the issues are under review. He said the use of the law has clearly been successful in other Michigan municipalities, including Detroit.

In Flint, "the decision was made based on the bottom line and trying to save money," Scott said of the move to Flint River drinking water.

"An elected official, if you have a problem in your district, people are coming up and complaining and talking to you, you take care of that issue. An EM doesn't have that accountability," Scott said.

"The emergency managers are accountable to no one but the governor, so they don't care."

Workman said the law is "meeting expectations," and "I honestly feel feel good about the EM process in Michigan."

Critics don't isolate mistakes made by mayors and city councils to condemn that form of municipal government and, likewise, the incident in Flint should not be looked at in isolation to condemn the use of emergency managers, Workman said.

It's significant that in recent years Michigan had six cities under emergency managers, and that is now down to one, in Lincoln Park, Workman said.

"It's given us the tools that we need in some pretty dire situations," he said. "Right now, I don't foresee the need for the next emergency manager."

Scorsone, the MSU expert, said Orr's restructuring work as an emergency manager in Detroit made the Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy of Detroit's largest city much smoother than it would have been otherwise.